Image credit: Rheinland Relations.
On 28 March, CERN and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a framework agreement for future co-operation on research and technology in areas of mutual interest. Future areas might include the development and characterization of innovative materials for applications in extreme conditions and for cutting-edge scientific performances, the development of new micro-technologies to be applied in miniaturized distributed sensor systems, and the development and testing of high-performance detectors for high-energy physics experiments and space payloads.
This year is CERN’s 60th anniversary and ESA’s 50th, making the signature an opportunity to celebrate the memory of a scientist who was a founding father of both organizations: the Italian, Edoardo Amaldi. During the ceremony, ESA’s director-general Jean-Jacques Dordain presented CERN’s director-general, Rolf Heuer, with copies of letters by Amaldi in which he lays out his concern for peace and the role science should play in fostering it. These letters were flown aboard ESA’s Automated Transfer Vehicle 3 – a spacecraft named in Amaldi’s honour.
